Moving Forward: 8 Guideposts for Strategic District Leadership
Dr. Gerald Hill engages in a rich conversation with Bob Maxfield and Suzanne Klein, reflecting on his district leadership experiences, guiding principles and vision for re-imagining teaching and learning. Drawing upon a wealth of experience as an educational leader and insight as a forward thinker, Dr. Hill shares his perspective and advice for current district leaders offering eight essential guideposts:
1.School Finance
“Try to be as transparent as possible, so everybody knows what we have, where it is and how we utilize the resources that we have. One of the things I’m most proud of is that we have corrected the district’s financial situation going from less than a 1% fund balance when I started, to about a 19% fund balance this year…It is so critical to have the finances right, because the resources enable us to set goals and priorities.”
2. School Board Relations
“Superintendents need to have a really good working relationship with their boards of education and that's a lot easier said than done. As superintendent, share your vision with your board and bring them along, developing a set of operating principles. Have the board make the same commitment to work toward the goals. If board members change, you have a new dynamic; but that communication is a constant.”
3. Staff Relations
“If I am leaving any kind of legacy here, it's that everybody has a seat at the table. All voices are heard and all opinions and perspectives are respected. The teacher leaders, the principals, the superintendent, the school board; we're in this together…As a team we will make it work or not work. Once we start splintering then we're already losing; we're losing that edge to be creative and innovative on behalf of the students that we serve. We can have conversations around the difficult issues but it’s student-centered and student-based.”
4. Organized Abandonment
“With the pandemic we learned that we don't need some of our traditional practices. This gave us an opportunity for organized abandonment…We need a new playbook. I think if we allow ourselves and our teachers and parents to develop and design environments that are conducive to the best possibilities and choices for students at any age, that we would be surprised with what they came up with.”
5. Flexible Thinking
“In terms of teaching and learning, no one strategy works best for every student; we need to be flexible in our thinking of how we deliver instruction...We have teachers doing some really creative work and they aren't that inhibited by pre-conceived boundaries. It needs to be the sky's the limit, and we need to create that feeling of safety and security and risk-taking at the central office level, the school board, and superintendent.”
6. Student Learning Environments
“High schools need to look more like community colleges where students are coming and going, working in large groups, small groups, focused areas, and teachers are there as facilitators and advisors. We need more flexibility in the schedule to get students into the community with internships, and build more community partnerships as ways for young people to experience what's out there.”
“Middle school should be a time of exploration. We're building a new middle school, designed for integrated communities of learning. Students will be working as collaborative teams; grades six, seven and eight together with a cadre of teachers, in more of a STEAM kind of environment school-wide, with different pathways.”
“Our primary schools and our intermediate schools need to be rich in literacy across the board and numeracy. Let’s take advantage of kids discovering their passions with more active learning situations. I would like to see a blurring of the grades.”
7. Graduate students with the Four C’s
“We developed a portrait of a graduate with the Four C’s. We want students to be: great communicators in writing, speech and through technology; collaborative problem solvers, working in collaborative groups; contributors not only to their classrooms and their schools, but to society and the world; critical and creative thinkers.”
8. Support current and future educators
“Young people coming into education have to have an understanding what their role is; have a firm understanding of what their goals are; have a support group that they can rely on and have discussions with; have some time for personal reflection; and be able to sort through the issues and not overreact, and feel you have the answer to everything…In West Bloomfield we have a richly diverse student body and I love the more recent grants available for growing your own future educators.”
Final words of advice
“First of all, my advice to a new or newer superintendent (or district leader) would be to seek out somebody that you know and trust as a mentor or executive coach. You need to have a space where you can bounce ideas off somebody, have the conversation not necessarily to come away with the right answer, but to come away with what the options are. As you're getting into the profession, you need to submerge yourself and really learn as fast as you can, but you also need to have balance in your life with time for family and your own personal well-being.”
“Never lose that spirit of curiosity that you see in kindergarten students when they come into school for the first time, and never lose sight of the fact that we are here for them…Education is a privilege to be a part of; it's an honor to be a part of.”
One of the more important things for democracy is to have an educated society. We have to keep in mind why we're here and what we do is important to not only the learners, but to society as a whole.”